Love the key to World Cup glory

Posted on 12/01/2010

Britain’s Got Talent legend Amanda Holden is proving her versatility by delving into the world of football and in her column in the News of the World she has got the perfect idea for how England can win the World Cup: love and harmony.

I predict big love for my friend The One Show's Christine Bleakley and Chelsea footballer Frank Lampard. They've been avoiding the paparazzi but if they go public with their romance they'll be surprised how much easier life becomes. Christine's good for Lamps because she's not impressed by a footballer's glitzy lifestyle. Before we watched Everton play Chelsea recently, Frank asked where she'd be sitting and Christine replied: "I don't know, probably in the fancy seats." Bless her. Christine is refreshingly undemanding so won't be a stress to Frank during the World Cup.

Oh bless, so when Lamps makes a couple of misplaced passes and smashes a penalty against the post in the quarter-final defeat to Portugal we know who not to blame.

Horse racing is a world that the youth of today do not understand, so the British Horseracing Authority believe, hence the recent announcements by Racing For Change (RFC). Groundbreaking insights such as changing odds from fractions to decimals have been put forward to lure the kids to the courses of the UK, but Alan Lee in the Times feels the powers that be will be better served solving the fixture congestion.

The best thing about the first raft of reforms proposed by Racing For Change (RFC) - immaculate timing. Racing folk have had little else to divert them, this past snowy week, so the ten quick fixes unveiled last Monday have stimulated debate to a degree no marketing spin could have achieved. Naturally, this has its downside. An empty stage has been a gift to the loudest mouths at both ends of the spectrum - those to whom utter revolution must happen yesterday and those reduced to a state of shivering fear by the word “change”. There have also been disingenuous responses from some who should know better, condemning these relatively trivial recommendations as if they were the totality of the project, rather than an exploratory toe in the water. Only when the bloated and incoherent fixture list has been addressed can RFC be judged fairly.